Several people each year die from food stuck in their throat. Food strangulation can happen to anyone, healthy or old people, and often is the result of not carefully cutting the meat into small pieces or chewing it adequately.
If the windpipe is completely blocked, death can occur within four to five minutes. There are a large number of first aid measures which have been developed in attempting to rescue someone who is choking, such as forcing a cough, bending a person over and giving him a hard slap on the shoulder blades, attempting to remove lodged objects with the fingers, or even cutting a hole through the neck into the windpipe to perform a tracheotomy to create an emergency airway. Most of these methods are only partially successful and can create a hazard for the victim.
A new method of technique has been developed by a surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Heimlich of Cincinnati, which involves an abrupt upward squeeze of the choking victim's upper abdomen to expel the object blocking the windpipe. The techique utilizes the air within the lungs and a utilization of a soft spot in the solar plexus to quickly move the diaphragm to a position to expel the air in the lung at a rapid rate to expel the blocking object.
This method is quite popular and is generally known as the "upward thrust" or "abdominal thrust" technique.
This method is quite effective; however, it requires some instruction in order to perfect the method to properly expel the lodged food from the victim's throad without causing internal injury.
If the victim is standing the rescuer wraps his arms around the waist allowing the victim's head, arms and upper torso to hand forward. The rescuer makes a fist with one hand and grasps the fist with the other and places the thumb side of the fist against the victim's abdomen slightly above the navel and below the rib cage and gives a quick upward thrust with the fist into the victim's abdomen. This technique may be repeated.
If the rescuer is kneeling and the victim is lying flat on his back, the rescuer places one of the hands on top of the other and is placed with the heel of the bottom hand on the abdomen slightly above the navel and below the rib cage and gives a quick upward thrust into the victim's abdomen to dislodge the food.
In order to prevent internal injury due to too much pressure or improper placement of the hands and thrusting is necessary it is necessary that some instruction be given in this simple first-aid method.
Heretofore several manikins have been developed for teaching the technique of artificial respiration for a victim who had stopped breathing and for external heart massage for a victim of a heart disorder, however, there are no known devices for teaching the dislodging of food from a victim's throat.